The Danish State of the Environment report is compiled and published by NERI every four years. The aim of the report is to provide an overall picture of the developments in the state of the environment and nature, and to describe the underlying reasons for these developments for e.g. human health.

The main focus areas include development and use of indicators and indicator systems for use in integrated environmental assessment, i.e. cross-disciplinary analyses and reporting on the linkages between environment and society. Research is carried out on the theoretical foundations for environmental and societal developments, as well as aggregation of indicators to produce more complex environmental indices, including the use of such indices in practice. Indicators are developed as tools to evaluate environmental efficiency in the various sectors of society and can also comprise 'performance indicators' to estimate the impacts of different environmental policy (e.g. in the waste sector or the transport sector).

An essential consultancy activity is preparation of Denmark's State of the Environment report, as well as development and maintenance of a thematic database on the internet. The thematic database forms the basis of the State of the Environment reports and is developed in accordance with these. Other consultancy tasks include development of indicators for Danish indicator reports, such as Denmark's 'National Strategy for Sustainable Development'. As forming part of the National Reference Centre cooperating with the European Environment Agency (EEA), NERI also contributes to the international development of environmental indicators and the EEA state of the environment reporting.